This invention pertains to high technology decorative materials for watchfaces, that is, decorative materials designed and fabricated employing state of the art technology, including computer-aided design and semiconductor processing techniques. Particular use is made of electron beam technology for generating both micrometer and submicrometer line widths.
While decorative materials, such as jewelry, have provided adornment for men and women from time immemorial, most advances in design and fabrication have occurred only slowly. Curiously, only limited success has been made in marrying jewelry fabrication with the science and technology available at that time.
Exemplary of such recent attempts is the so-called diffraction jewelry, developed some years ago, utilizing diffraction gratings previously developed for use in scientific instruments. Such jewelry, e.g., pendants and earrings, is typically generated by mechanical ruling processes or by optical processes such as holography. The patterns that are generated by these techniques are generally regular in nature, e.g., circular or linear. Although this jewelry is capable of diffracting incident light into a myriad of rainbow colors, these replicated gratings lack the precise detail and high quality which can be achieved using state of the art technology available at the present time and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,490,440. In addition, the diffraction jewelry is limited in visual design by the constraints imposed by the initial process, either mechanical rulings or optical holography, that is used to generate the gratings.